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Inner-city Calgary community Inglewood has earned the title of Canada’s greatest neighbourhood in a competition put on by the country’s city planners. The Canadian Institute of Planners announced the winners in its Great Places in Canada contest on Friday.

CALGARY - A consulting company for sustainable water, waste and energy solutions has captured the ATB Small Business of the Year Award organized by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. The award was presented Thursday night during the Chamber’s annual event during Small Business Week.

The massive power outage affecting a 17-block swath of downtown is not expected to have a long-term impact on Calgary’s economy, even though approximately 2,100 businesses started the work week in the dark.

About 10,000 employees can expect a “substantial interruption” to their regular routines Tuesday, as a swath of downtown Calgary remains in the dark as a new work week begins. Businesses in the affected zone — a 17-block area stretching from 4th Avenue S.W. to 7th Avenue S.W. and from 4th Street to 11th Street S.W. — were encouraged to contact employees over the weekend and make plans for alternate work arrangements. With the power outage affecting everything from computer servers and phone lines to elevators and parkade doors, employees will have to work from home or another off-site location until at least Thursday, when Enmax hopes to be able to restore service to the area.

CALGARY - Overhead expenses and taxes are the two biggest challenges facing small business owners in Canada, followed by concerns about pricing and marketing, according to a recent TD survey, which also found that about a quarter of small businesses are concerned about the costs of labour and finding talented employees. The survey found that small business owners in Alberta are more likely than the national average to cite marketing (33 per cent), labour costs (29 per cent) and access to talented employees (27 per cent) as the top business challenges they expect to face in the next few years, but less likely to cite government regulations (14 per cent).

CALGARY - Veteran newspaper columnist David Parker sees his role in Calgary’s burgeoning business community as a pretty simple one. “I want to be a booster for this city and its economy - this city’s business,” said Parker, who has been in Calgary since 1963 in various roles including selling advertising for a newspaper, account supervisor for a marketing and advertising agency, and communications manager and film commissioner for Calgary Economic Development Authority before embarking on a newspaper writing career.

CALGARY - Over the years, Calgary has become in many ways the small business capital of Canada. In fact, Calgary had the highest number of small businesses per capita of the major cities in Canada in 2013 at a rate of 40 per 1,000 population, according to research by Calgary Economic Development.

CALGARY - The federal government’s move to cut Employment Insurance premiums for small businesses will be a boost for Alberta employers struggling to compete in a tight labour market, business groups said Thursday. Both the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business praised Finance Minister Joe Oliver for announcing the Small Business Job Credit, which will reduce EI premiums to $1.60 for every $100 earned in 2015 and 2016, down from the current rate of $1.88.

CALGARY - The perception is that large companies that dominate the skylines of Calgary and Edmonton also dominate the number of businesses in the province. But Todd Hirsch, chief economist with ATB Financial, said Monday in a commentary note that they actually account for a tiny fraction of the total in Alberta.

CALGARY - Alberta has the highest vacancy rate of unfilled jobs in the country, according to a survey released Monday by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The organization said there were 63,300 unfilled jobs in the province in the first quarter of this year with a vacancy rate of 3.8 per cent.

Anyone who has ever met Arlene Flock was always left with a lasting impression of the legendary Calgary business icon. Flock, owner and president of Flagworks, was often described as being a “cracker jack” -- “dynamic woman” -- who was full of energy and had a certain joie de vivre. A champion of entrepreneurs and a mentor to all.

Wages in Alberta’s food service sector can be expected to rise as employers “addicted” to cheap labour wean themselves off the temporary foreign worker program, federal Employment Minister Jason Kenney said Monday. “We know it’s tough in parts of Alberta, but you’ve got a market problem with the scarcity of labour,” Kenney told the Herald editorial board in a conference call. “We believe there should be a market response, and that means responding to the scarcity of labour through higher wages and higher prices and more active recruitment measures.”

A Lethbridge woman wanted in connection with a fire that caused $250,000 damage to a home last month has been arrested. Kathy Jean Petersen, 48, was taken into custody late Tuesday at a local business and charged with arson. She is expected to appear in court on June 20.

Paying city fees by credit card may be quick and convenient for Calgarians — particularly those collecting reward points — but it’s costing the city millions each year that critics argue could be better spent elsewhere. A Freedom of Information request filed by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and obtained by the Herald, found the City of Calgary paid nearly $2.6 million to process credit card transactions in 2013.

CALGARY - A young Calgary entrepreneur is in Toronto today helping to craft an action plan to grow young enterprise across the country. Kevin Alto, 26, of Alto Collective which is a company that produces handmade wood products from longboards to wallets to phone cases, is participating in the Canadian Youth Business Foundation’s first-ever Action Entrepreneurship Canadian Summit in Toronto.

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